PREFACE. I WISH all my readers a merry Christmas and a happy New Year. May their holidays be graced with good cheer, and what is infinitely better, may the grace of Him, whose love gives us our true holidays, make every heart a temple of gratitude and holy joy. A Pilgrim may wander all over the earth, and find no spot in the world, where men are bound to God by so many ties of mercy, as we are in our own dear native country, or where old and young, rich and poor, have so much cause for heartfelt rejoicing. Therefore, an American, wherever he goes in the world, should go with the feeling that his own country is the best in the world. Not as a proud feeling, let him carry it, but a gentle one, a quiet feeling behind all other moods and varieties of thought, like the sense of domestic happiness, which makes a man sure that his own home is the sweetest of all homes. So, wherever an American goes, the image of his country, like a lake among the mountains, should, as a mirror, receive and reflect the world's surrounding imagery. He should see all other countries in the light of his own. The first time I left America for Europe, the last word said to me by Mr. Dana (to whom I have taken the liberty of inscribing this volume, though I doubt not there are some things in it which will displease him), was this: See all that you can see. A good rule for a traveller, to whom things that he has neglected seeing, always seem very important to him after he has got beyond their reach, though while he was by them they seemed unimportant. But a man should not look upon external shows or ostentations merely, but at men's habits of thought and action, as they have grown in the atmosphere of surrounding institutions. So Mr. Dana would doubtless add to his advice the maxim that a man should say just what he thinks of what he sees, and not be frightened by the weird sisters of criticism. Among all classes there will be found here and there a frank, free, gentle-hearted critic, with the milk of human kindness and indulgence for another's prejudices; though there be some, who will accuse a man of bigotry, whenever he says anything that does not square exactly with their own religious views. But if a man tries to please everybody, there is a fable waiting for him, of which it is a sorry thing to experience the moral, instead of being warned by it. We do love the good old New England privilege of speaking one's mind. As this book of the Jungfrau will probably be bound up, if any think it worthy of a binding, with the other of Mont Blanc, I may say of both, that if I had been intending to make a regular book of travel, with statistical information, political speculation, records of men's Babel-towers, and all the ambitious shows of cities, I should have made a very different work indeed. But there are so many more books in the world of that sort, than of this pilgrimage kind, that I have preferred to go quietly, as far as possible, hand in hand with Nature, finding quiet lessons. So, if you choose, you may call the book a collection of Seaweed; and if there were a single page into which there had drifted something worthy of preservation, according to that fine poem of Longfellow, I should be very glad ;anything, whether from my own mind, or the minds of others, that otherwise would still have floated at random. There are many such things ungathered, for the waves are always detaching them from the hidden reefs of thought in our immortal being, and tossing them over the ocean. "Ever drifting, drifting, drifting, On the shifting Currents of the restless heart; Till at length in books recorded, They, like hoarded Household words, no more depart." The reader will find, in our two pilgrimages, a rehearsal, if I may so speak, of most of the noted passes of Switzerland, and of the wonders of some, that are not usually threaded by travellers. We have passed amidst the magnificence and sublimity of Chamouny in the face of Mont Blanc, have crossed the Col de Balme with its sights of glory, and the pass of the Tête Noire, with the hospitable Grand St. Bernard, the sunset splendors of the Vale of Courmayeur, the stormy Col de Bonhomme, and the glittering icebergs of the Allée Blanche. Now we climb the wondrous Gemmi, and in the face of the Jungfrau march across the sublime pass of the Wengern Alp, by the thunder of the Avalanches, then over the Grand Scheideck, the gloomy and terrible Grimsel, the pass of the Furca, the romantic St. Gothard, the sky-gazing brow of the Righi, the Wallenstadt passes, and last and grandest of all, the amazing pass of the Splugen. And as we go, we visit the great glaciers and cataracts, shining and roaring, and the infant cradles of some of the largest rivers in Europe, and the most romantic lakes in the world, and many a wondrous scene besides. We go moralizing, all the way, not at all unwilling to be accused, sometimes, of discourses upon our icy texts, and wishing to make a volume more of thoughts than things. I beg those who do not like them, to remember that there may be those also, who will think they are the best parts of the book. I somewhat regret not having incorporated into this volume my early visit to Italy through the Pass of the Simplon, but this deficiency will be more than made up in the excellent book of Mr. Headley on the Alps and Rhine, to which I heartily commend the reader CONTENTS. PAGE 1 17 ...... CHAPTER Jesuits...... .... IV. Physical Plagues of the Canton du Valais and of Switzerland. V. Gorge of the Dala....... VI. Elements of the landscape. Alpine Flowers. Jonathan Edwards..... VII. The Moon and the Mountains. Village of Leuk. VIII. Baths of Leuk.............. IX. Pass of the Gemmi. Trials of Faith.. X. Pass of the Gemmi. Successive splendors of the view.... 39 talisman... 15 45 XII. Picturesque cottages. A picturesque language. Right and unright innovation.... XIII. Kandersteg. Frutigen. The Blumlis Alp. Lake and Village of Thun.... XIV. Thun to Interlachen. Interlachen to Lauterbrunnen. Bible in Schools.... 57 XV. Staubach Cascade and Vale of Lauterbrunnen. 62 66 70 XVIII. Mortar-avalanches. Valley and glaciers of Grindlewald.... 74 80 XX. Glacier of Rosenlani and Falls of the Reichenbach.. |